All this happened, more or less.

Только сейчас, кажется, начинаю понимать, почему Генрих Саулович Альтшуллер после ТРИЗа начал работать над ТРТЛ. Наверное потому, что "творчествость" (creativity) или "гениальность" это не какoe-то свойство человека (как учит нас популярная био-психологическая литература), а личный выбор и жизнь с последствиями этого выбора. R.J. Sternberg об этом тоже писал, но систему принципов, как Альтшуллер, создавать не захотел. Или не смог.

Alex Tabbarok:

Rationality is a property of equilibrium. By this I mean that rationality is habitual and experience-based and it becomes effective as it becomes embedded in the rules of thumb and collective wisdom of market participants. Rules of thumb approximate rational decision rules as market participants become familiar with an economic environment. Individuals per se are not very rational; shift the equilibrium enough so that the old rules of thumb no longer apply and we are likely to see bubbles, manias, panics and crashes. Significant innovation is thus almost always going to come accompanied with a wave of irrationality. When we shift to a significant, new equilibrium rationality itself is not strong enough to tie down behavior and unmoored by either reason or experience individuals flail about liked naked apes - this is the realm of behavioral economics. Given time, however, new rules of thumb evolve and rationality once again rules but only until the next big innovation arrives.

relates to the discussion with vi_z
http://watertank.livejournal.com/1142727.html

Удивительным образом ажиотаж вокруг записей в жж "Когда нефть подешеевет" совпал с пиком цены на нефть.

Теперь, каждый день я с надеждой смотрю в Топ Яндекса, чтобы увидеть там статью "Почему мировая экономическая депрессия никогда не кончится."

Скорей бы.

Using functional and symbolic design features for Polynesian canoes, we show that natural selection apparently slows the evolution of functional structures, whereas symbolic designs differentiate more rapidly. This finding indicates that cultural change, like genetic evolution, can follow theoretically derived patterns.

Deborah S. Rogers and Paul R. Ehrlich (2008). Natural selection and cultural rates of change, PNAS.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/9/3416.abstract

related:
- functionality vs culture
- the signaling theory
- fashion, customization
- dual-pace evolution
- environment transformation
- evolution patterns

Удивительно, как тысячелетние привычки человеческого общения перестают работать в интернете. Если пару сотен веков назад можно было просто ткнуть пальцем в мухомор и сказать детенышу: "Не ешь! Отравишься!", то теперь сама ссылка на инфо-отраву приводит к поеданию мухоморов. Причем, интернет так устроен, что чем больше народу знает про отраву и ставит на нее ссылки, тем больше народу травится.

Link is a link is a link. There's no way to color a reference on the net as positive or negative.

The first example is a network of books on politics, compiled by V. Krebs (unpublished, but see www.orgnet.com). In this network the vertices represent 105 recent books on American politics bought from the on-line bookseller Amazon.com, and edges join pairs of books that are frequently purchased by the same buyer. Books were divided (by the present author) according to their stated or apparent political alignment—liberal or conservative—except for a small number of books that were explicitly bipartisan or centrist, or had no clear affiliation.

For our second example, we consider a network of political commentary web sites, also called “weblogs” or “blogs,” compiled from on-line directories by Adamic and Glance [32], who also assigned a political alignment, conservative or liberal, to each blog based on content. ... the network divides cleanly into conservative and liberal communities and, remarkably, the optimal modularity found is for a division into just two communities. One community has 638 vertices of which 620 (97%) represent conservative blogs. The other has 587 vertices of which 548 (93%) represent liberal blogs. M. E. J. Newman. 2006. Modularity and community structure in networks.

It seems like political blogging is the ultimate propaganda machine. It doesn't even attempt to convince the other side. Rather, its only purpose in life is mobilization of believers. Barak Obama will be the first US President who leveraged this new media.. Very similar to JFK's ability to use TV in 1960.

So much for the hidden ovulation

Geoffrey Miller and his team at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, compared the earnings of lap dancers who were menstruating naturally with those of dancers taking the hormonal contraceptive pill. During the non-fertile periods of their menstrual cycle, both sets of dancers earned similar tips. But when naturally cycling lap dancers entered their fertile period they earned significantly more in tips than their co-workers on the pill.

Finally, the mystery of evolution, human biology, and economics is exposed in lap dancing research. My fellow businessmen, beware of ovulating businesswomen, aka sirens ;)

In the beginning people domesticated stone.

Don't have time to write an extended comment on sowa's post about selection as the main function of education. Just wanted to note that any organized environment comprising multiple types of destinations and multiple objects of different properties moving, in space and time, toward these destinations has to incorporate various selection procedures. This is true for all kinds of systems and processes, from evolution to parts manufacturing to presidential elections.
However, when we talk about education, it is important to understand that selection has to be transformative, and not degrade into a simple sorting routine performed by a disinterested bureaucratic machine. The issue here is not so much the existence of the selection process itself, but rather the balance of responsibility for individual's development that has to be shared between different players within the system. Obviously, an individual stands to lose the most if he or she does not devote sufficient efforts to self-transformation. Given that, the education system's service to the individual would be to provide adequate guidance and resources. Positioning selection as its main function tends to absolve teachers and administrators of their direct responsibility to educate. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that best university faculty is often recruited among best scientists, who are not necessarily best teaches.

Timeline of clothing and textile industry

Specifically note inventions of the Flying shuttle in 1733 and the spinning jenny in 1764.( Read more... )